#5Things: This Week in Social

5Things “Make the Goose Sillier” December 4th, 2023
Edited for clarity.

Joey Scarillo: Welcome to the #5Things: This Week in Social. This is the Webby award-winning podcast that looks at five stories from social data, content, and tech to give you something to listen to while you're trying to decide what gets done in December and what ends up on the “January list.”

If you are a marketer, an advertiser, or a creator, or anyone who makes a living by using social platforms, then you are listening to the right podcast.

Today on the show, we welcome back Ari Santana. Hello, Ari.

Ari Santana: Hi, how are you?

Joey Scarillo Doing well, doing well. Here's a question for you. What is your favorite holiday movie?

Ari Santana: I think it's the Holiday. Right, that's the one where they like swap houses, right?
That is the one.

Joey Scarillo: That's a classic.

Ari Santana: And then one of them falls in love with Jack Black. That one's my favorite.

Joey Scarillo: Classic rom com. So good. So good.

And, back again, it is Jayda Hinds. Hello, Jayda.

Jayda Hinds: Hey, hey.

Joey Scarillo: Same question for you. What is your favorite holiday movie?

Jayda Hinds: Polar Express is top of mind because of the hot chocolate scene. It's just like a childhood.

Joey Scarillo: Yeah, that is a good one. That's a good one too. Well, I'm Joey Scarillo and I have always loved the Muppet Christmas Carol. It just warms my heart every single year.

Okay, now these are a few of our favorite things. It's the five things.

First up, Ari warns that other platforms should watch out as TikTok expands its territory.

Next, Jayda tells us why Burlington, Vermont is weirdly popular on Spotify Wrapped.

Then Ari breaks down the anti-Instagram Lapse.

Then Jayda explains how Pinterest is testing a new search tool for body diversity.

And finally, Ari recaps a trend exploding online that is pushing the limits of AI, making sillier gooses and cuter animals all around. All right, we'll get to that later.

But first, let's dive into the five things in the first one of the day. It's all about TikTok and how they are expanding. Ari. Tell us about it.

Ari Santana: Yeah, so TikTok is becoming kind of your one stop shop for just about anything social and digital right now. What was just a platform for silly short form video content has expanded to something bigger.

TikTok's Essentially coming for YouTube and Amazon, as we saw with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it solidified TikTok Shop as a legitimate retail outlet for consumers and brands. The platform subsidized discounts and a longer sales period, which kind of allowed users to score. These unimaginable deals and creators and brands were incentivized to kind of drive that through TikTok's creator revenue for engagement and then brands also receiving better affiliate rates as well.

This increase in creator revenue and their new rollout of 15 minute videos is also shifting TikTok to this larger entertainment app than just another social network. Users are spending more of their time watching longer than one minute long videos and creators are seeing that when they post long form videos, they're gaining five times the growth rate in followers as well.

So people are really looking for that long form content that's really meaningful for them. This expansion is keeping users on the app longer and engaged longer, so they don't necessarily need to go to an outside source like YouTube for a video essay, or a music video, or even Amazon for their day to day skincare because everything is right there in the app.

TikTok creators don't necessarily have to go to YouTube to post long form video essay. They can stick to TikTok and kind of break that up across multiple videos and still gain the same amount of revenue that they would on YouTube. So it's basically becoming the sole place that a creator and a user needs to go for anything around their social or digital or even retail needs, which is really cool.

Joey Scarillo: Jayda, one of the things that we've learned over the past couple weeks as we've been talking about TikTok is that, you know, In stream shopping in app has not really caught on in the U. S., so why do you think that's the one limitation that TikTok seems to have in the U. S. when it comes to its global dominance?

Jayda Hinds: I don't know if I would refer to it as a limitation. I feel that when I see videos now on my For You page on TikTok, I feel like every other video is actually a sponsored video for a TikTok shop. It's clear that TikTok is promoting this type of content. I'm actually a creator on TikTok who Primarily post video essays and I actually made a video essay on TikTok shop and it wasn't a necessarily positive conversation around it.

It's clear that the app is seeing really good results from this and people are using the shop. But I think in terms of sustainability and waste and just buying less, I am not the biggest fan of something like this. Friends of mine, or at least peers in my circle. Can agree to that point.

Joey Scarillo: You mentioned peers. So I'm just curious, do you think that there is a generational gap between the amount of things being purchased online specifically through TikTok?

Jayda Hinds: Maybe. I am inclined to believe that people who are more focused on climate change and sustainability and waste as a concept, and these entities are less likely to buy from stores that aren't really seen as sustainable or ethical.

We don't know the stats behind these stores. Funnily enough, Rihanna's Fenty brand was voted less ethical than Shein. And with that in mind, who knows what brands like TikTok shop are doing on their own sites. So that's, that's my general inclination.

Joey Scarillo: Yeah, it's interesting. Ari, do you still think that TikTok is a bit of the Wild West or do you think it's starting to, like, really gain its sea legs in terms of just being a very serious platform for this kind of commerce?

Ari Santana: It's definitely one of those things where if you follow a brand or a small business that you resonate with, and they're able to monetize through TikTok shop, then it's a great way to increase that like brand to consumer funnel. But I wouldn't be surprised if it's also something that like a bunch of people are drop shipping through.

Very similar to Amazon, either like you find a reputable brand or like an Amazon approved brand. to shop off of, or you're taking a gamble buying literally anything off of it. So it's definitely a double-edged sword for TikTok shop as well. Yeah. Jayda, what else?

Jayda Hinds: Also, TikTok's progression over the years reminds me of what Elon wants to do with X. He wants to make X this everything app where you can go to date or shop or use your finances, and it feels like TikTok is moving more quickly in that direction than X is.

Joey Scarillo: Well,yeah, I mean, I feel like TikTok maybe already has some of that infrastructure that X is going to have to play catch up on, but it will be interesting to see where it goes. What do you think, Ari?

Ari Santana: I would agree, I think TikTok did it in a way that didn't need to essentially explode and rebrand. It was something where in small increments, they pushed longer videos, they started a monetization with their creators, and then they launched a shop and will continue to like build on this foundation.

Whereas like we saw with Elon, he kind of came in, To this, like, long standing platform that people adored, blew it up, and then was like, we're going to do something totally different, but have kind of the same vibe.

Joey Scarillo: Yeah, it's almost like he's starting from a starting line that's a little bit further back as he is building out, not only rebuilding an app, but also rebuilding a brand.

Okay, let's move on to our second thing of the day. Every year on this show, we talk about Spotify wrapped. It is sort of a milestone in what we can expect on social. So why not talk about it?

This year, though, something a little bit interesting happened. Burlington, Vermont was very popular. Jayda, why don't you talk about why that?
happened with Spotify.

Jayda Hinds: Yes. So Spotify Wrapped is back at the end of every year. Spotify users get a personalized slide show of their top artists and songs of the year. And it is a music lover's dream to see the data of individual listens right in front of you. This year, though, there was a twist on Spotify Wrapped called Soundtown.

The app matched a user to a city where its residents share music taste. Funnily enough, Burlington, Vermont. With a population of 44, 000 people was a super popular destination on SoundTown for people who like indie rock and listen to artists like Phoebe Bridgers, Boy Genius, or Haim. Burlington, Vermont was so popular that even its mayor went ahead and stated on the city's official website it.

Instead, Burlington are diverse and forward thinking, and they're steeped in arts and culture. Non mayors, AKA, your everyday people and everyday citizens also spoke about this and they said that this is literally because Burlington is the lesbian capital of the US since a lot of the popular artists in the city are queer, Berkeley, California had the same responses on downtown two, and of course by proxy there are a lot of memes on Burlington and Berkeley right now because of this.

Joey Scarillo: Well, I also got Burlington on my Spotify Wrapped. So I'm curious, Ari, did you do your Spotify Wrapped and did you have any surprises?

Ari Santana: I actually got Berkeley, California, which I was like, Oh, it's probably just. geolocated because I'm so close in LA and was like, oh, Spotify wrapped just read me to filth essentially and called me out for being weird.

But it was definitely one of those things this year where I looked at my Spotify wrapped and I knew Taylor Swift was going to be on it. I didn't realize she was going to be the top person on it. To that degree, a lot of people were a little embarrassed with their Spotify raft this year, as it did call a lot of people out for essentially being a little more basic in their tastes than they want to let social media know.

Joey Scarillo: Well, I fall squarely in that camp. All of my top bands were no surprises. They're all bands that I've been listening to for 20 odd years or so. The only surprise I had was my top song, and maybe you guys will find this surprising too, was Bad Habit. Which is a song that I feel like I never sought out, but just kind of Spotify would put on random playlists while driving.

What about you, Jayda? Any surprises for you?

Jayda Hinds: No surprises. To Ari's point, I feel like everyone may be a little bit more basic this year. Drake has always been in my top for Instant of the Two. They're in my top again. They've probably been in my top for maybe five years consecutively. Funnily enough though, I saw this post on X where someone was photoshopping their Spotify wrapped in class to make it look better than what it was. And that was just funny to me.

Joey Scarillo: Well, I just want to say, since we're talking about Spotify wrapped, if somehow, someway, this podcast was your top podcast of 2023. Please let us know. Tag us @Grey on social. We want to give you a big internet hug for that.

All right, let's move on to our third thing today.There is a new app on the block, it is the anti-Instagram, it is Lapse, Ari, tell us all about it.

Ari Santana: Yeah, so Lapse hit the scene a little earlier in this quarter, but to my surprise it was actually first released in 2021 and of course didn't gain much traction until its re-release where it shot to number two in the U.S. on the App Store.

It shares a lot of similarities to the YouTuber David Dobrik's Dispo app from a few years back, where you would take a picture on this visual camera and then it would populate on its own. But this photo app is a little different. It encourages people to take pictures like they did in the good old days of disposable cameras, and then you would snap your photo, wait for them to quote unquote develop, and then post them for your friends to see, or just keep them in your archive to save for memories. There are a few catches to Lapse. All the photos have to be taken in app. And can't be altered, which gives it that anti Instagram or, like, Instagram before it was fake feel.

Biggest problem is that it's only available by invitation and requires new users to invite five friends to join in before they can even access the photo sharing platform as a whole. So it's unclear if the platform will stick. A lot of conversations online when Lapse first started gaining traction is that I don't have five friends.

Like, this is embarrassing for me to send out an invitation to five of my contacts in hopes that I can try out this app. It definitely feels a little bit like how Clubhouse did their rollout. For those who remember Clubhouse, it was the podcast-esque social media platform that had a rise and inevitable fall.

There's a very real possibility that Lapse will go the way of many of its predecessors in social, kind of in that app graveyard. But despite Gen Z's eagerness to find a replacement for Instagram, it's been really hard for people to get through the hurdle of inviting five friends into the platform and kind of creating these journals of posts on Lapse as well.

We'll see how it goes. I don't think there's a space necessarily for brands at this point to jump into Lapse either, which may also be a hurdle that the developers need to figure out if they want to stick around. Cause even if it does become really popular, it might also go the way of Vine where it doesn't have a monetization capability and therefore it doesn't have the fundings to stick around, but we'll see, I am cautiously optimistic.

Joey Scarillo: You know, it's interesting. I was just thinking through all the apps that. I have downloaded because of this podcast. You mentioned Dispo, BeReal, Hive, Clubhouse, Lemon8, and Amp, just to name a few. So, I'm curious to get to try this app, Lapse.

I don't see, for me, this being something that I would stick with very long. But I'm curious, Jayda, about the entry point of having to invite friends into the app, or it being invitation only. Do you think that this tactic works to get people on the app? Or, do you think apps should maybe take an approach similar to what Instagram did, and with Threads, and just release the floodgates.

Jayda Hinds: Release the floodgates. That's how I feel about it. I have Lapsed. It was annoying to send out these five invites. I also, honestly, I was like, do I even have enough friends for this? But I think they should release the floodgates.

To Ari's point about Clubhouse, I believe it was invite only as well. I question why apps do this if they want it to be as popular as it can be. I understand like secrecy and It feeling like only we know about this and only your friends know about this. I can see how that appeal exists. I just generally think it might be better if they released the floodgates, if they do want to compete with Instagram where anyone can download it and it's accessible.

I also question its longevity. I know the app is about posts without edits or just post in real time. There's also this type of content on Instagram that's popular right now. Emma Chamberlain is known for doing it, which is sort of “making Instagram casual again.” That sort of notion, having a picture of you bare faced or in your pajamas or whatever the case may be you and your truest form, that type and style of content is also becoming more popular.
While apps like Lapse and BeReal are popping up, the two are sort of trying to push similar points in that way.

Joey Scarillo: Yeah, it's interesting being secretive or elusive about who gets on the app feels kind of “old social” to me. I feel like lately, you know, you want to get as many people on these apps as possible because when I'm on there and I'm looking for friends who are on, it's usually the same four or five friends who are on these apps and doesn't really make for a great social experience.

So we'll see, but we'll definitely keep an eye on Lapse as we move forward.

All right, speaking of moving forward, let's get through our fourth thing today, let's talk about Pinterest. Jayda, this is an interesting one. They are testing a new search tool for body diversity. Sounds really interesting and really cool, why don't you talk to us about it?
Jayda Hinds: Pinterest launched a new search tool called Body Type Ranges to make searching for images more inclusive. It's a consumer facing tool that allows users to filter select searches by different body types. It'll initially be tested on women's fashion and wedding content before being expanded to different types of images.

They worked alongside the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, or NAFA, an organization which addresses body size discrimination. Model and body size advocate Tess Holliday and creators Natalie Craig, Kelly Brown, and Stephanie Brito were consultants on the new feature, and Megan D'Alessio, the manager of inclusion and diversity at Pinterest, mentioned that a reason for this type of tool was that A 2022 study found that body dissatisfaction is prevalent for young people.

On average, 50 percent of adolescent girls are unhappy with their bodies and 30 percent of boys are unhappy with their body. This type of tool tracks for what Pinterest has rolled out before. A few years ago, the app launched a skin tone ranges tool that allowed users to better refine their beauty searches.

And also, the app has previously launched a hair pattern search where users can refine their searches for hair inspiration, um, based on wavy hair or curlier hair. I think the Body Type Ranches tool is fabulous. When I go on Pinterest, I do primarily see the same type of body, whether in sponsored ads or on the Explore page.

To promote diversity means to change the status quo and change these sort of built in baselines that are on these apps, and I'm glad that Pinterest has been taking steps in the right direction. However, I do wish that this type of tool was available for searches of all gender identities, and I hope that This is considered in the future when the tool is expanded.

Joey Scarillo: Ari, do you think that this feature is coming at the right time or do you think it's actually coming too late?

Ari Santana: The timing is perfectly fine. Like, it would have been nice if it matched with the height of the body positivity movement, but it's still something that's very prevalent and very real for a lot of people. There's a greater acceptance for body positivity across the board now. So seeing that translated onto a search function like this has been really cool to see. And I'm excited to see how it affects people's searching habits on Pinterest as well.

Joey Scarillo: Well, we will see, and hopefully this feature catches on and becomes a good user behavior.

All right let's move on to our fifth and final thing for the day. This is a fun one. So there is a trend exploding online, pushing the limits of AI. When you think it can't go any further, somehow it does. Ari, why don't you explain it to us?

Ari Santana: Yeah, so people are using AI to generate silly gooses. And not just any kind of silly goose, the silliest goose. imaginable. It's the “make it more” trend, which is the newest craze on the internet, and it involves the popular AI tool DALL-E. It's a tool created by OpenAI and essentially ChatGPT's cousin. You describe an image, in this popularized example, a goose, and DALL-E renders that image. Then you prompt it to make “more.” And in this case, “more silly.”

On X especially, people would post their initial image with a prompt along the lines of, “For every 10 likes, I'll make this image more…” blank. As we discovered in some of these examples, the AI taps out if you just keep saying, “Make it more” of something. So you'll need to start being a little more creative with your inputs as you make a sillier goose. As you can imagine, it gets a little crazy pretty fast with DALL-E rendering these subjects to kind of god like entities floating in mysterious and whimsical spaces of relevant content around your subject. But brands can learn from this, I think. It's proving how unserious people can be around AI and creating images through AI, and people are open to its use in a very unserious manner.

I think the pitfall for brands, especially when they use AI, is kind of being dishonest with their viewers or being a little too serious with their viewers. I think more brands should hop on, make it more trend if it's still a thing by the time this recording is published.

Joey Scarillo: Well, I'm sure there are a lot of brands that would love to use a tool like this.
And if they can find fun, creative ways, I say, why not? Jayda, what do you think this means for AI moving forward, if it can continually get more and more and bigger and bigger, where do you think the possibilities could go?

Jayda Hinds: I think it's super easy to insert themselves in this conversation. Well, okay, so I saw a bodybuilder photo and the user asked AI to make the man in the picture more muscular until the man became an actual croissant.

I'm thinking about food brands specifically because of this example. I'm sure that like auto brands or what have you, tech brands could work their way into this conversation, but wouldn't it be just funny if you asked one completely inanimate object to become a product of your brand? It's the easiest way to do it.

They don't need a designer for it or a huge budget behind it. So, I think this is the time to capitalize off something fun and silly, because you can't go wrong with a silly vibe.

Joey Scarillo: I'm all about the silly vibes. I'm all about the silly gooses. I'm all about just getting through December unscathed. I think that does it for us today.

If you don't already, be sure to follow us, share us, review us, like us, write to us with your questions, comments, concerns, points of interest, or complaints, or just send us a thing you want us to discuss. You can do all of that by emailing us at podcasts@Grey.com. Connect with us on Spotify by sharing your thoughts on the show - just look for that Q& A field.

The topics discussed on this show are written and researched by the Social and Connections team at Grey New York with help this week from our panel Jayda Hinds and Ari Santana.

This podcast is produced by me, Joey Scarillo, and Samantha Geller, with post production by Amanda Fuentes, Guy Rosmarin, and Ned Martin at Gramercy Park Studios.

Marketing and communications support from Adrian Hopkins, Christina Hyde, and Jayda Hinds.

Listen to Grey Matter: A Podcast About Ideas, where we speak to founders, artists, and innovators about bringing their ideas to life. You can find all episodes of Grey Matter: A Podcast about Ideas wherever you find this podcast.

That's it for us. Thank you, listener. And please, as always, be social.

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You silly goose.